... As historians of China’s revolutions, we suggest that the Tiananmen analogy is powerful, but it is not the only or even the best one to keep in mind. To draw solely upon this one historical example, linked to a tragedy, is to take a fatalistic view, that the student boycott and the Occupy Central movement are already doomed. We should make room as well for other moments in history—as students themselves now do.

For example, consider two of the stories that former student leaders told the latest generation of activists who gathered around the Goddess of Democracy last week—stories that referred first to the New Culture Movement of 1915–23 (which called for enlightenment through science and democracy) and then to the May Fourth Movement of 1919 (a related wave of anti-imperialist, anti-authoritarian protests). Chong Chi-keung, student union president of 1987, spoke of a house whose sleeping occupants were unaware of a fire. Wong Weng Chi, president of 2007, invoked the spirit of May Fourth, arguing that only through mass movements could society be changed. Until now, Wong reflected, China has science but it doesn’t have democracy. These are two stories that every Chinese schoolboy knows: the former is of Lu Xun the leftist writer, calling for political awaking; the latter refers to a protest that marked the birth of modern Chinese nationalism.

The analogies suggested by the Hong Kong students themselves show that the “historic mission” to be shouldered is not that of Tiananmen but of May Fourth, a democratic and patriotic protest that preceded the founding of the Communist Party and whose ideals remain incomplete. Today’s Communist Party, contrary both to its early history and its textbook history, does not wear May Fourth’s mantle. Instead, in the name of social change, Hong Kong’s students declare that it is theirs, while the Communist Party acts and speaks in way that bring its pre-1949 authoritarian opponents to mind—an irony of which local activists are well aware. For example, when pro-Beijing forces in Hong Kong began calling on students to snitch on classmates who supported going on strike, democracy activists labeled this a “white terror” tactic, using a term that Communist Party textbooks employ to condemn brutal tactics that Chiang Kai-shek wielded when the Nationalists were in power before 1949.

The students who have been gathering in the shade of the Goddess of Democracy and invoking the May Fourth tradition do not know what the future will hold, any more than did the students of 1919, who achieved key demands in the end, such as the dismissal of three particularly despised officials. If the outcome is uncertain, though, the importance of the movement and the need to pay attention to how it develops is clear. Ever since 1997, Hong Kong struggles have been significant not only to local actors but also to those on the mainland wondering if moves toward democratization could be in their future. To them, the determination that Hong Kongers have shown in recent years to wrest the democracy they have been promised from the Communist Party has often been inspiring. All the same, moves by Beijing to control future elections has surely had a chilling effect.